As more websites collect more data on their users, the impact of a single security breach raises significantly. A single incident can leak thousands of records, and the impact of the incident can drag on for years.
But what if you could prevent it? What if there were steps you could take to keep you, your business, and its employees’ data safe? Luckily, there are a lot of steps you can take.
Read on to learn 10 of the best data protection tips.
-
Consider Encryption
This is the first step you should take in protecting your company’s data. Encryption gives you the power to scramble any data you’re transferring, basically, so it’s useless without the required password.
This means that, even if the data is stolen, it’s a lot harder to compromise and use.
Encryption is also easy to do on your own. A ton of programs can be used and tools available to encrypt and decrypt your company’s data for optimal business data protection.
-
Back Everything Up
When you back everything up, you keep your data safe in the event a device gets stolen. Ideally, your backed-up data will even be encrypted.
Keeping a consistent backup of your business’s data ensures that no information you need will get lost when things happen.
-
Practice Safe Disposal
When you need to get rid of an old debit or card, you’ve probably been told to shred it. That extra precaution is set in place just in case something goes awry. The same should be done for old technology.
While you can’t place a laptop in a shredder, you can clear it off before you dispose of or sell it. This will prevent any old data from being stolen and then turned around and used against your company.
You should also overwrite deleted files, delete old files from cloud storage, and take steps to make hard drives unreadable after they’ve been disposed of.
-
Create a Safety Routine
Phishing emails and other sneak attacks are common to see when it comes to data thieves, but creating an unreachable data wall can help keep thieves out. Services like DevSecOps make it easy to automate your security process, so data protection is always updated.
There are a few other precautions you can take as well, like using a hardware-based firewall to keep malicious attempts to steal data out.
Keeping cameras and microphones blocked, disconnected, or turned off is another smart thing to do for your company’s protection. Simply placing a sticker or sticky note over webcams should be enough, but if they can both be disconnected and turn off when not in use, that’s ideal.
-
Keep Everything up-to-Date
Keeping things like plugins and apps up-to-date will ensure that your company is using the latest security and safety measures. When these go unchecked for too long, your software and other technology begin to lag behind the rest and place your data at potential risk.
While any operating system and antivirus software updates can be time-consuming, it’s smart to keep everything in check, so small weaknesses don’t become exposed.
-
Educate Your Employees
When it comes to security best practices, it’s worth educating your employees on — no matter how highly they rank in the company.
Send out information, run seminars and training courses, conduct tests and quizzes regularly. This helps ensure that everyone in your company can properly maintain the integrity of your company’s data. Conducting background checks on your employees can also help ensure that nobody inside has access to things they shouldn’t.
A few things you can do include ensuring that each employee knows how to turn their computer on and off whenever it’s not in use; double-checking that everyone knows how to identify a phishing email and knows what links are and are not safe to click on.
Other basic things include not writing passwords down on sticky notes or inside notebooks and always signing out of accounts when they’re not in use.
-
Protect Your Passwords
Selecting strong passwords is the number one way to adhere to security best practices for your business. Two-factor authentication is also a great thing for your company to adopt.
Ensure you and your employees use phrases rather than words, along with a combination of numbers and symbols when they’re setting passwords. Make sure different passwords are being used for each account, and never save passwords in browsers.
To keep track of passwords, adopt a safe program that can store them securely. Do not opt for Excel spreadsheets, word documents, plain pen, and paper, and expect your passwords to stay safe.
With safe password protection comes knowing exactly who has access to what. Make sure there’s a protocol set in place to revoke access to individuals who quit or are terminated from their role within your company.
-
Build an IT Infrastructure
Lastly, building a strong IT infrastructure ensures that your company has a team of people to help whenever things go awry. Not only can they help with technical issues, but they’ll also be able to help with security concerns as they come up.
Put These Data Protection Tips Into Practice
When you put these data protection tips into practice, you give your company and its data the chance to be safe and protected from potential harm. You also gift your employees with skills they can take outside of work to keep their data safe daily.
Data protection is the number one way you can keep yourself, your business, and its employees safe in a digitally-driven world. Taking precautions wherever you can is the best place to start.
If you’re interested in more on the latest in business and technology, check out the rest of our blog.
Interesting Related Article: “Which Search Engines Should You Use to Protect Your Data?“